The African Enterprise

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Microsoft 4AfrikaPartner

Biography

The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative was launched in Feb 2013 to help accelerate Africa’s economic development and to improve its global competitiveness. It is a long-term commitment to help empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers, and business and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help their community, their country, the continent and beyond.
The 4Afrika Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa, and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world. We want to help Africa become a net producer of technology, rather than a net consumer. We believe that African innovation can and should shape Africa’s future.
4Afrika is tightly connected to Microsoft’s network of more than 10,000 existing partners in Africa today, a network we have built through more than 20 years of investing and operating in the continent. Microsoft’s business model is built on a strong partner network, globally, and Africa is no different. 4Afrika leverages these existing partnerships and is working to create new ones across the public and private sectors to help advance common goals and to create value for Africans, by Africans.
We have built 4Afrika on three key enablers we feel are critical to the success of that mission: innovation, world-class skills and affordable access. The simple fact is that Africa’s vast youth population (44% under the age of 15) means that the continent simply can’t create enough jobs to accommodate the masses entering the workforce. Already today this is a problem in many countries such as South Africa which is facing 25% unemployment, 70% of which is in the youth population. For Africa to truly become competitive, we must find ways to create jobs, and we believe that access to innovative technology and world-class skills are the ways to achieve this – opening new markets and improving productivity in existing ones.